The Inuit sitting on billions of barrels of oil

After a decade of legal wrangling and spending $4.5bn (£2.8bn), this year Shell Oil was given permission to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska. But many in the local Inuit community are concerned it could have a devastating impact on one of their main sources of food - the bowhead whale.

Marie Casados shows me the contents on her freezer. Inside there's whale meat, muktuk - frozen whale skin and blubber - a selection of fish and a polar bear foot, which looks like a human hand. She describes it as a real delicacy. But it's more than that - this is her food supply for the winter.

Fishing and hunting are central to the Inupiat way of life - archaeologists have found evidence of humans hunting whales in the area dating back to as early as 800BC.

"We are the oldest continuous inhabitants of North America," says Point Hope's Mayor Steve Oomituk. "We've been here thousands of years."